Ag News: Microsoft Broadband Campaign

**Microsoft recently announced its commitment to closing the rural broadband gap with a significant infrastructure boost.

Agweb.com reports more than 19 million people in rural America are currently without access to broadband.

The company launched the ‘Microsoft Airband Initiative’ in 2017 with plans to make broadband available to two million of those rural Americans, expanding that goal to three million rural Americans by July, 2022. The new goal includes 25 states.

**Record imports in October drove the U.S. trade deficit to the highest level in a decade. The Commerce Department says the gap between what the U.S. sells and what it buys from foreign countries rose to $55.5 billion in October.

As reported on agweb.com, that's the fifth straight increase and the highest since October 2008. The deficit with China alone rose 7.1% to a record $43.1 billion dollars.

**People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is insisting people change their language in an effort to “remove speciesism” from our daily conversation.

According to agweb.com, PETA wants people to stop using common colloquialisms the activist group calls “anti-animal language,” including “beat a dead horse,” “take the bull by the horns” and “kill two birds with one stone.” PETA would prefer we say things like “feed a fed horse,” “take the flowers by the thorns” and “feed two birds with one scone.”

Since the announcement, not surprisingly, PETA was blasted by Twitter users.